Gordaen’s Blog

I have a weakness for Tower Defense games. The basic premise is that you build defensive towers to defeat oncoming enemies. Killing the enemies gives you more money so that you can build more towers and upgrade your existing ones. In a way, they’re like a simplified RTS game… and these are all free.

#5 - Flash Circle TD

The major difference between this game and other TD games is that this one does not end after a certain number of enemies go past. Instead, this ends when there are too many “creeps” on the screen (100 or 80, depending on difficulty level). I didn’t feel like tower upgrades were as effective as they should have been. Other TD games usually make it clear that upgrades are more beneficial than a large number of weak towers, but I wasn’t so sure in this game. The sound effects are rather repetitive, so you might want to just mute them and use your own music.

#4 - Desktop Tower Defense 1.5

This one features extremely simple graphics and a slightly different idea. Rather than having a path you must bombard, you need to force the enemy along a path using your towers. Combining cheap towers to fill in the path with strong towers to deal the damage is the best way to approach this. If you just try to put a bunch of towers around randomly, you’ll quickly find the enemy blowing past.

#3 - Bloons Tower Defense

I first reviewed this game back in August. In that review, I basically said this game is addictive, and it is. This is probably one of the simplest ideas for a TD game, but something about that simplicity is just fun. All you have to do is pop the balloons, but soon you’ll encounter massive amounts of extremely fast balloons that pop to reveal more balloons inside. The super monkey is one of the most satisfying towers in any of these games. Like many of the TD games, this one suffers from repetitive sound effects.

#2 - Vector Tower Defense

As you can tell from the screenshot, this TD game has graphics that are quite a bit different from normal. The towers are also a little different from the typical TD layout (e.g., general purpose tower, fast tower, air tower, etc.). Each color is slightly different, but they also do different amounts of damage depending on what color they are attacking. You also have complete control over each wave of enemy units, so you can strategize as much as you want. I did a slightly more detailed review previously.

#1 - Onslaught 2.1

The best tower defense game seems to be Onslaught at this point. It has what is expected in a TD game, but it also has several nice features. The ability to upgrade specific stats on towers is something I’ve wanted in other games for quite some time and Onslaught has that. You can upgrade power, range, and rate individually. It also has combos in which two (or more) towers that are maxed out on power can combine to create a more powerful effect. Combine a missile turret with two gun turrets and you get nukes. Combine missiles and lasers and get (as you can probably guess) missiles that shoot lasers. There are a lot of combos, so it’s a good idea to be aware of them before you start.

Another awesome feature of this game is the sheer number of keyboard commands. You can upgrade with the “q,” “w,” and “e” keys (for power, range, and rate, respectively) and you can combine those with shift to upgrade as much as you can afford. Of course, you don’t have to use the keyboard, but it will definitely make you a much faster player.

The graphics are also good, but the game does quickly become ridiculous as the screen filles with enemies, rockets, bullets, lasers, etc. Chances are, your computer will slow down so you’ll probably have to lower the quality once the screen starts filling up. This is one of the big weaknesses of flash, so you can’t blame it on the game too much.

Other Mentions
Turret Defense - Create turrets on the side of the road to destroy incoming enemies. This one has simple graphics with a semi-C&C theme.
Tower Defence by Roman Sanin - Runs quickly because the graphics are extremely simple. This one is probably only worth it if your computer can’t handle the better TD games.
Toytown Tower Defense - Check this one out if you want a unique experience. The map is large and you also have a “hero” that you can use to help defend. You also have to worry about power rather than just money.
Tower Defense (.org) - If I had found this site earlier, I probably wouldn’t have time to post this because I would be playing the collection of TD games here.